


With a boulder on my shoulder

by pallidiflora



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Abusive Parent, Actually 'uncomfortable' is the key word, M/M, Mommy Issues, Munchausen by proxy, References to book canon, Uncomfortable Oedipal Overtones, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-25 16:28:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20727260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallidiflora/pseuds/pallidiflora
Summary: Feelin' kinda older.Or, Eddie Kaspbrak has his fifteenth birthday party.





	With a boulder on my shoulder

**Author's Note:**

  * For [forparadise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/forparadise/gifts).

> In true Stephen King fashion, I figured I would indulge in a heartland rock epigraph. (and title.) Additionally, the Wiki suggests that Eddie's filmverse birthday is March 6 (a day before Richie's), and while that's very sweet, I couldn't find a source for it, so I stuck to his bookverse November birthday. And finally, as one of the tags implies, there are references to the book canon, though the fic is overall set very firmly in the movieverse.

_ When I was a young boy, _

_ Said put away those young boy ways _

_ Now that I'm gettin' older, so much older _

_ I long for those young boy days _

-John Cougar Mellencamp

* * *

_ November 1990 _

_ Why not have your birthday party at my house? _ Richie Tozier had said, not unkindly. Then he added: _ you know, cut the umbilical cord? _ Eddie Kaspbrak suspected an ulterior motive. _ My house, my rules_—that was the sort of thing parents said. Richie never liked much of anything parents said, but this had a certain usefulness to it, to be trotted out when it suited him: who controlled the music (Butthole Surfers, the only thing he'd wanted to listen to for the past few months), whose turn it was at Ninja Gaiden, what movie they'd rent on any given week. (_Porky's _ or _ Bill & Ted_, every time.) He would not want Eddie to be the centre of attention, even for one day. 

Eddie's mother, for her own peace of mind, must have imagined it as the sort of genteel affair seen in picture-books—children in Leave-it-to-Beaver-Sunday-best; matching party hats; neat, modest presents in shiny pink paper, everything sweet as Easter Sunday. Even then, her permission had been hard-won.

Half out of her usual chair, one hand on the arm as though bracing for a swoon, she said, _ how come I can't just bake you a cake, sweetie? I'll make whatever you like, you could have yellow, or cherry chip even— _

After last summer, he had half-heartedly allowed his mother to settle them both back into the rut she'd been furrowing since he was five years old. Or not _ allowed_—it was like gravity. One did not allow gravity. It was inevitable. (He could hear Richie now: _ yeah, your mom's got a gravitational pull, alright—bigger than the Earth's, judging by the size of her! _ ) He had continued to trudge to the pharmacy for her Geritol, his nasal spray, his eye drops. He tolerated her dabbing hydrogen peroxide on his cuts, muttering to herself. He would wake sweating in the night only occasionally, and often at first was not sure why. (_O__h. The nose. It had no nose. Richie said it was syphilis, makes your nose fall off, and your dick too— _ Then he'd fall back asleep. The only reminder would come later, when his mother would say _ you keep sweating through your shirts—do you have a fever?_)

But now, the thought of having to chew and swallow any of her thickly-frosted Betty Crocker confections—infused, he knew now, with a sticky, amorphous malice—made the opening of his throat shrink. The insinuation was clear: she wanted him to sit, hands in his lap, as the two of them were enveloped entirely by the oppressive fog of her love and goodwill, a miasma that would smell of canned frosting, camphor, and Estee Lauder's _ Beautiful_, dutifully bought for her every Christmas. Once enveloped, there would be no escape; it was like the Bermuda Triangle.

_ I'll be fine, mommy, it's just in Bill's house! You know they've got a nice house, right, with a piano, and, and, china figurines— _ It seemed important to mention this, as if these banal middle-class trappings carried within them an inherent safety. (There was no such safety in Richie's half-finished basement, where mold spores lurked, and sewer gases escaped from floor drains, and who knew what else. Plus his parents smoked. Eddie could taste, already, the stale tobacco exhaled from the carpets, something he both hated and took a rebellious pleasure in.) 

_ I suppose I can't stop you, though Lord knows I do everything for your own good! I just want you to be very, very careful, Eddie, _she said, smoothing out his hair before he could jerk away. She fixed him with her magnified, wounded gaze. _ If your little friends give you any dangerous toys, any of those remote-control planes or, or, firecrackers— _

_ We're not little kids anymore! We're just— _

_ Don't you yell at me. _ Her chin dimpled and she brought her hand to her mouth. _ Don't you dare yell at me. _ This through her fingertips, painted with the gummed-up pink Cutex she kept at all times on the end table. (_Mauve _ , the colour was called—she was insistent on that, though Eddie had no idea how that differed from regular pink. Colours like _ mauve _were what nice ladies wore. Red was for hussies.)

_ I didn't! I wasn't. I'm sorry. _

She deflated back into her chair. _ You just take care of that arm. I know that doctor didn't set that thing right. _

At first, in a fit of defiance, he'd considered leaving his medications at home—all of them, especially the stupid Flintstone vitamins she harangued him about. (_What's wrong with them, sweetheart? You used to love them when you were little. The red ones were your favourite, don't you remember?_) He'd taken a few steps down the hall before his legs began to tingle, starting in his feet and creeping up his calves. Say he got a cut. There were all kinds of things in soil, just for starters—you could get some kind of dysentery, like in the Oregon Trail game he'd played at school, except so much worse for its immediacy. Then there was that flesh-eating bacteria out there, he'd heard about it from one of his classmates, _ necro-something or other_, like a name out of a comic book, gets into a cut and then your skin rots off from the inside out— Hands shaking, he grabbed a tube of Neosporin, his aspirin, his prescription allergy meds, even the hated inhaler. When he'd set off down the hall again, the bottles made a shamefully reassuring, almost talismanic rattle.

_ Don't forget your jacket, _ his mother said on the way out. He was already wearing one.

Richie's mom had left for them a bowl of clammy Doritos and a two-litre bottle of Dr. Pepper. She also had, in a touchingly pitiful attempt at birthday cheer, taped some streamers to the wall, set out flowered paper plates. She had no idea what teenage boys liked for birthdays, or parties, or anything. Everyone had brought snacks, laid out on the table next to his presents, of which there were three—one each from Bill, Mike and Richie. (Stan and Bev had moved away last year, and had promised to phone often, though they never did. They didn't see Ben much outside of school.) It wasn't a bad spread: chocolate chip creme pies, Ho Hos and Nutter Butters, Reese's Pieces and Twizzlers; enough to make you deliciously, exhilaratingly sick if you felt like it. (You had the choice, he thought, whether or not to eat enough junk food to make you puke. That was something—a sickness conjured up at will.) 

Eddie situated himself in the most comfortable chair, an old La-Z-Boy that had been relegated to the basement because of a tear in the seat. (In Richie's house, objects that had lost their shine but were still functional were placed out of the way; they had the room to separate practical from _best._ His friends had never been allowed in their living room, which was for adult guests to smoke and, as Richie said, talk about their hemorrhoids. Also that was where they kept their fancy liquor—things with names like Grand Marnier and Cointreau and Chambord—which tasted like cough syrup and drain cleaner. There was no such space in Eddie's house.) Just to annoy him, Eddie thought, Richie had perched on one of the chair's arms, where the nap had worn away. The four of them passed the snacks around as though at a ritual, or in church.

"Gimme one of the chocolate chip ones," Eddie said through a mouthful of sour peaches; Richie had been bogarting the box, already half empty.

"What, one of the creme pies? You wanna creme pie? I'll give ya a creme pie!" He grabbed himself through his jeans.

"Just gimme a fucking cookie, you're not even funny." He snatched one out of Richie's hand before he could do something revolting, like lick it. _ You still want it? _ "Can I open my presents now?"

"Don't let me stop you."

Bill had gotten him a mini-album on cassette, one he could play quietly in his room so as to not overpower his mother's Barbra Streisand or Dusty Springfield records. Mike had gotten him a care package of sorts: packets of gum, root beer gummies, some Jolly Ranchers. Silly things, really, but the thought that his friends had bought them with their own pocket money lent them a companionable air that pleased him in a way he couldn't articulate. Then there was Richie's present, wrapped haphazardly in tissue paper. _ I know what this is, _ Eddie thought as he peeled back the tape, expecting a comic book.

It was a porno mag—Hustler, from a few years back, likely stolen, one Richie's father wouldn't miss. Its proclamations were more bizarre and varied than a drugstore advert: _ AMATEUR SEXVIDS! AIDS IN THE WORKPLACE: RIGHTS & WRONGS! GRAVE ROBBERS '88: BLACK MARKET BODY PARTS! Our centrefold knocks your socks off! _ The cover featured a blonde woman with a brash, challenging gaze, hands over both breasts. (_Tits,_ Richie would say. _ Jugs, hooters—who the fuck says breasts anymore?!_)

"What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?" Eddie said.

"Well, Eds, first you unzip your pants—"

"No, dipshit, my mom'll kill me if she sees this in my room. You keep it." He threw it back at him.

"No, come on, take a look, I bet there's some real good stuff in there—" Richie started to riffle through the pages; as Eddie tried pushing him away, he caught glimpses of gauzy, soft-lit photos: a woman in stockings, red-tipped fingers spreading herself _ down there_; a man with a darkly-furred chest, dick in hand, licking a woman's backside; a lot of tanned, illicit flesh.

"You are such a motherfucker! Get away from me!"

"Motherfucker, huh? I'm not the one kissing mommy goodbye every day—_c'mere, Eddie-Bear, give mommy a kiss, you know where to put it—_"

"Don't, don't, that's so fucking disgusting!" Eddie began to swing at him with one arm.

"I got your disgusting right here," Richie said, and stuck out his tongue; Eddie could still see the wet brownish cookie crumbs cemented to his back teeth. Richie advanced on him and they launched into a full-blown tussle, after a moment's struggle ending up on the floor, a blur of grappling legs and arms, Richie shouting_ I've got mono, Eds, I've got mono, watch out!_, Eddie's voice rising into a screech: _ quit breathing on me! _ They separated only when Bill pulled them apart, hauling Richie up by the back of his shirt as though grabbing a dog by the scruff.

"Suh-suh-suh-stop it, stop it!" Bill let him go with a shove. "The hell's wuh-wuh-wrong with you?"

Richie adjusted his glasses. Eddie brushed dust from his knees.

"Holy shit, you guys," Mike said into the silence.

"I was just fuckin' around," Richie said, sulkily contrite. "C'mon, let's just sit down, my mom ordered pizza and it'll be here soon."

_ That was all your fault, dickhead! _ Eddie thought, outraged. But he didn't want to press the issue; Richie now sat on the far end of their flowered sofa, hands between his knees. In another ten minutes they were all talking and laughing with their mouths full. Richie had hidden the magazine under the couch.

Throughout the rest of the evening, in which they gorged themselves and played Nintendo and burped and air-guitared along to Motley Crue, Eddie began to notice an ache in his right arm. By the time he got home—later than he was supposed to—it was throbbing at the site of the break. (What was that word again? Like it's all in your head? _ Psycho-something... Well, _ Eddie thought, _ I am _ not _ psycho._)

"Did you have fun?" his mother asked. She'd left the dinner plates still in their usual place on the table—her own, crusted with hours-old smears of food, and his, spotless, his clean silverware arranged as though with a ruler. "I wish you'd called. You know what that does to me, honey."

_ You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar_—she liked to say that, sometimes. He imagined himself sinking into a syrupy, dark-gold quagmire.

"I _ did _have fun," he said, insolent even to his own ears. He kissed her cheek and his lips came away faintly greasy with cold cream. Then he went to his room.

She'd been right all along, of course. He had the fleeting desire to jerk off, thinking of nothing in particular but a peculiar, furtive excitement, an itch of murky origin that was as much anxiety as arousal. But his arm hurt too badly. Lying in bed, he imagined his mother's face appearing in the crack of the door-frame, her face a pink, shining balloon floating above her flowered nightdress. _Well doesn't that just serve you right, _she would say, voice as stomach-ache-sweet as a whole box of cookies.

* * *

A few weeks later, they received a phone call on a Saturday morning. Lately Eddie's mother hadn't wanted him answering; you never knew who could be calling, solicitors or crank callers or slavering sex perverts who'd rustle and pant into your ear. Eddie had gotten up quietly to pee when it rang; he shook himself off, listening through the adjoining wall.

"No, Eddie's not available right now, he's still sleeping. And I have to tell you, I don't appreciate you calling at this hour, you know perfectly well he needs his rest—"

Eddie waved his hands under the tap and stuck his head out the bathroom door, calling "is that for me?"

He could hear his mother shifting on the linoleum. She would be wearing her terry cloth slippers, the ones whose pinkish-grey insoles were dented with wear. The thought occurred to him that she'd want a new pair on her birthday, ones with satin bows or floral embroidery; details like that were hard to anticipate. He heard her heave a sigh. "I didn't know you were up, Eddie-Bear—"

"I'll take it." Wiping his hands on his pajama pants, he dashed into the kitchen. She handed him the phone with a martyred expression, saying _ I don't like it when you shout down the hall like that_, and pretended to potter around, clanging dirty dishes, giving him sidelong glances. She didn't have her glasses on, which gave her a sly, squinting look. 

It was Richie. Could Eddie come over today? Without asking, Eddie said yes. They would meet up in the afternoon, they decided, as his mother fussed with dish towels, clucking her tongue, saying _ well _ these _ need a washing... _ Richie on the other end, chuckling to himself: _ is that your mom? Has she finally snapped? _ He replied _ shut up Richie _ and hung up.

"I'm going to Richie's for the afternoon."

"I heard you. I also heard you tell your friend to shut up and while I _ do _ think that boy should shut up sometimes because I know _ exactly _ what kind of mouth he has on him I don't _ ever _ want to hear that come out of _ your _ mouth—" She took a breath and turned her eyes to the wall. _ One of these days he'll be telling me to shut up_—he knew that's what she was thinking. It did not seem to cross her mind that he could say worse things to her, things he'd said to Richie before: _ kiss my ass. Go fuck yourself. _"You be back in time for dinner." 

When he left the kitchen it occurred to him that he hadn't properly washed his hands.

He arrived at Richie's at half-past twelve. As he hung his snow-flecked coat in the hall, he could hear Richie's parents laughing companionably at some daytime TV show, _ Phil Donahue _ or _ Family Feud_, probably eating popcorn and drinking coffee. Eddie had met Richie's parents on only a few occasions—his father was genial, bespectacled, wore slippers around the house (not like the kind Eddie's mom wore—his were solid, a practical dark plaid); his mother was always coiffed, wore over-sized faux pearls and real gold earrings, served grapefruit and cottage cheese for dessert. They meant well.

It struck Eddie, then, as it did sometimes, the fussy details of Richie's home: the porcelain umbrella stand for visitors, the toilet rugs (his mother would never, they were germ-sponges), the up-to-date wallpaper with its border of pastel flowers. Such trendiness had a certain vulgarity to it, as far as his mother was concerned—it was _ putting on airs. Who do they think they are? _ Not that she'd ever been here. Not that she'd ever met them.

But then they went upstairs to Richie's room. His room was bigger than Eddie's, but smaller than Bill's; like Bill's there were papers tacked on the wall, a _ Weekend at Bernie's _ poster he'd pinched from the Capitol, cut-outs from Mad Magazine. On his dresser was a line-up of old Thundercats and He-Man action figures, plus some loose change; he'd propped a skateboard deck against it as a sort of art installation. Peeking out from underneath, Eddie could see the same issue of Hustler, only half the title and the headline visible: _WET WOMEN: SCUBA SIREN, RIVER RAFTER, JACUZZI DUO... _ He wondered if Richie had jerked off to it. The idea was strangely repellent, Richie touching himself to these nameless people whose oiled bodies exuded a kind of mocking, unearthly healthfulness. 

On his bed, atop the hastily-tucked-in comforter, was a package, wrapped in the self-consciously stupid choice of pastel birthday bear wrapping paper. Richie handed it to him; it was the rough shape of a porn magazine.

"The hell's this?" Eddie asked.

"I kind of figured I should get you a real present," Richie said, twitching his glasses.

"It doesn't matter, Rich. I don't care anymore."

"Just take it, numbnuts."

Eddie accepted it with a dry-mouthed thrill. (What if it _ was _ porn? Would they look at it? Richie would exclaim over it again, he'd insist: _ that dude's dick looks like a naked mole rat. Jesus, those nips could take an eye out! _He pictured, with incredible clarity, the two of them leafing through it side-by-side. Their elbows would touch when Richie turned the pages.) Wanting to get it over with, he ripped the paper off; it was a whole stack of comics: Robocop, Ghost Rider, The Terminator, stuff like that.

"Whoa, this is... actually really cool, Richie. Thanks."

"Yeah, well, th-th-th-th-th-that's all, folks!"

"Okay, no, you've already ruined it—"

They shoved each other, they laughed. Richie got them chips and Coke and they laid down on his bed to read them. After awhile Richie kept knocking his raised knee into Eddie's, saying in his Toodles the English Butler voice _ oh so sorry, so sorry old chap, good heavens old bean I do apologize _ until Eddie was shrieking with frustrated laughter.

"You're such a fucking weirdo!" he said, batting at him with a copy of _ The Terminator: Tempest. _

Again in the British guy voice: "you kiss your mother with that mouth?" Then in his own: "oh wait, I know you do."

"Don't even fucking start with that again—"

This time he put on his Southern Senator voice, drawling _ why I oughta soap yer mouth out, I say, you young whippersnapper— _ He traced the perimeter of Eddie's mouth with his salty-oily fingers, slid one inside, _ c'mon, open up now, son_; Eddie bit him hard and he yelped with laughter. _ Ow, Christ! _ Richie was on top of him now, knees either side of his waist. He wiped his wet fingers on his shirt. Both of their mouths were open now, displaying teeth and tongues, closer together than they had intended. They were breathing each other's breaths, each hot, smelling of sugar syrup. (_Tooth decay, _ Eddie thought, _ that's what tooth decay smells like, I can feel the bacteria eating away the enamel already—_) Eddie tilted his face up and Richie kissed the side of his mouth.

Then he tensed and made to pull away; Eddie placed a hand on the back of his head. From underneath the dresser he could feel the blonde magazine lady's brazen stare, a stare that had fixed him and Richie both. Now they were caught in it like a tractor beam. (He could hear Richie's voice, awful, off-key: _ gotta hit me (hit me!), hit me (hit me!) hit me with those laser beeeeeams! You know that song's about beating off, right? _ Yeah, no shit, Sherlock!)

The next kiss was straight-on, wetter, having more of a taste of spit and potato chips. The room seemed to expand, to encompass more than just Richie's posters and his skateboard and his drawers and a closet full of objects Eddie had never seen, pairs of underwear, boxes of childhood stuffed toys, half-empty gum wrappers and lotion and dried-up pens. Richie's glasses were askew; he tossed them onto the bed, somewhere where Eddie hoped they wouldn't crush them. Up close, he could see the two red marks on either side of Richie's nose, sunken in as though beginning to decay. It brought hickies to mind—would Richie want to give him one? What would that feel like? If he pressed on it later, would it hurt? He would have to wear a turtleneck.

But Richie kissed him on the mouth only. He was on top of him fully now; they were both hard now, both knew the other was hard. Experimenting, Richie slid his tongue around the inside of Eddie's mouth. The half-chewed remnants of the chips he'd eaten earlier and the chips that Eddie had eaten earlier were mixed together now. They had already mixed their blood a year ago—what was a wad of some spitty food? But in a panic Eddie thought _ herpes, thrush, rhinovirus, that's so gross, _ deliriously turned on, dick as hard as a shotgun roll. The thought of something so disgusting made him grind against Richie's thigh; Richie sounded like he'd been punched in the stomach. He swallowed, withdrew, eyes closed. He looked like he was in pain.

"Did you wanna...?" He paused, then put on a scratchy, rancorous voice that still sounded mostly like his own: "ya wanna know why they call it a blow_job? _"

"...What the _ fuck _are you talking about?" 

"George Carlin, dude."

"You don't sound anything like fucking George Carlin." 

"No, but, like..." Richie stalled, "did you wanna try...?" For once in his life, he couldn't seem to get the words out; as always, there was no need.

A fearsome arousal seized him, like the first drop on a roller-coaster. God, he wanted to. He didn't. His dick was staining the front of his underwear. He’d rather have thrown them away than explain. "There's no way I'm putting your dick in my mouth," he breathed. "How often do you wash that thing, once a year? There's all kinds of bacteria on there—there, there could be streptococcus—"

"Jesus, Eddie, shut up. How about I blow you?"

_ Come back here, kid! I'll blow you for free! Come back here! _ Eddie's eyelids fluttered; his hips jolted; he made a sound without meaning to. His stomach lurched with lust and nausea; he nearly gagged at the sensation. He felt that he would come soon, whether Richie touched him or not.

"No, I don't want you to," he lied.

"Just let me touch you, then," Richie said. Eddie angled his hips toward him, placed a hand on Richie's wrist, drawing him closer. With some difficulty, Richie unclipped the waist pouch Eddie where kept his medicine. _ Like undoing a bra, right? _ His voice was shaking. He had no sooner tugged down his shorts and reached into his underwear than Eddie was coming, hard and fast as a baseball between the eyes, frightening in its intensity, like when he'd discovered orgasm by accident the first time. He was aware of Richie whispering _ oh fuck, _ not the way he usually did, not rude or affected but afraid.

When Eddie opened his eyes, Richie had a glazed, shell-shocked look. His eyes, near-comically diminished, were fixed on a point beyond Eddie's head; more than likely he couldn't see him anyway. The smell of tobacco was coming in through the central air vents; Eddie groped for his inhaler, took a long pull. Richie was laying there rigid as a (_oh god, don't think of it like that, not right now_) corpse.

"Um, did you want...?" He shot a perfunctory glance at Richie's crotch. The thought of touching his cock made his palms tingle.

"I already uh—when we were—" He made a masturbatory gesture with his fist. It seemed oddly feeble, as though made by a sick person or someone elderly.

Eddie wanted to make fun of him for this, but wasn't exactly sure how. (Richie would have known what to say, if it had been him, had all sorts of phrases on-hand for such an occasion—_two-pump chump, huh? _ Or else he'd start squawking _ it makes me cream my jeans when she comes my way, a high school, a high school confidential!_) Eddie had not realized it'd grown dark outside; the room had a bluish cast to it, a yellow stripe of hallway light invading from under the door.

"I should get going," Eddie said into a silence that felt subterranean, submerged as if underwater.

"Sure, yeah." Richie, back turned, fetched some Kleenexes, scrubbed at his hand, grabbed his glasses from where he’d thrown them onto the bed. When they stepped out into the hallway, Eddie could see finger marks all over them; he imagined Richie breathing on them, rubbing them on his shirt. He did this sometimes right in Eddie's face, just to bug him.

They didn't say anything on their way to the door. From the living room there came a blue-grey halo of smoke; he could feel Richie's eyes on him, waiting for him to pull out the inhaler again.

"See ya," Eddie said, and slipped on his boots.

"Later, alligator," Richie replied in an off-hand way, hand on his shoulder. That was the hand he'd used to jerk him off. He hadn't washed it. He would have to, to get the smell off; he would have to wash his own underwear. He wouldn’t think of throwing them out;_ that would be stupid_, he’d say. _ And anyway you find someone’s stained underwear in the trash and then you think they’re the victim of a sex crime_—

It wasn't until Eddie was halfway home that he realized he'd left his comics on Richie's bed. When he returned he found his mother in her usual chair, crying as a talk show played in the background. She was not actually watching it; it merely served as the backdrop for her own theatre, scenery painted by grade-schoolers.

"You're late again," she said, her lip trembling. She looked like an over-sized baby in a print dress.

"I'm _ not_—"

"You _ are._ I said to be home for dinner, don't we always have dinner at five-thirty? Don't we, Eddie?"

"I guess," he said.

"Well it's cold now," his mother said. Her affect had turned to that of a make-up counter sales-lady—brusque, efficient in her ruthlessness. "The spaghetti."

He could have said any number of things. He could have said _ shut up mommy _ or _ kiss my ass _ or _ go fuck yourself. _ Instead he said _ I'm sorry. _ What he wanted more than anything was to brush his teeth, but went instead to spoon masses of stiff gluey spaghetti into two bowls. He snapped two fold-able TV trays upright and set the bowls on them. Then he went upstairs for his mom's bottle of Valium. There it was in her bedside table, cocooned in a silk-lined drawer organizer; there also were her spare reading-glasses, a handful of cheap rings, a sachet of potpourri. He took her two, and made her a cup of tea to wash them down. For himself, he got a glass of cold milk, which he didn't particularly like—the slimy sourness of it made him queasy—but he thought it would be comforting for her to see him drink it. (Though she'd waffled on milk in the past; first it was _ you need more calcium, Eddie, _ then it was _ hormones! Hormones in the milk! Next thing you know you'll have boys— _ She didn't finish. Possibly she was going to say _ growing bosoms.)_ When he slid her the cup of tea she said _ really now Eddie, don't strain yourself. _ Then she leaned forward. _ You smell like cigarettes. _

They sat there in a kind of ordinary stupor, watching TV, chewing and swallowing. Eddie nursed his milk, which by now was warm-room and even less appealing. It went uncommented-on. In fact his mother didn't say anything; she sighed, and picked at her nails, and watched him through her glasses as though he was very far away. Maybe she needed a new prescription. 

By nine o'clock she was asleep, snoring gently, chin resting on her collarbones; her glasses had slipped off the end of her nose and into her lap. Carefully he pulled the crocheted blanket off of the back of her chair and draped it over her with a solemn tenderness. He ran his tongue over his teeth.


End file.
